Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 06, 2011 @08:54AM
from the when-did-the-future-get-here dept.

KPexEA writes with this excerpt from geek.com:
"[Game developer David] Braben has developed a tiny USB stick PC that has an HDMI port on one end and a USB port on the other. You plug it into an HDMI socket and then connect a keyboard via the USB port, giving you a fully functioning machine running a version of Linux. The cost? $25. The hardware being offered is no slouch either. It uses a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM and runs OpenGL ES 2.0, allowing for decent graphics performance with 1080p output confirmed. ... We can expect it to run a range of Linux distributions, but it looks like Ubuntu may be the distro it ships with. That means it will handle web browsing, run office applications, and give the user a fully functional computer to play with as soon as it's plugged in. All that and it can be carried in your pocket or on a key chain."

Apparently it supports composite video out too, so an old analogue TV with the right input would do in place of a fancier HDMI capable model. Though you are right in that the comparison with the OLPC is a bit unfair to the OLPC.

I have a workstation, an Asterisk box and a Windows 2008 server hooked up to my KVM/USB Hub. I have a free port. I plug this in and I have the machine that I've wanted to surf the web while my workstation is otherwise occupado, for only 25 bucks and (more importantly) not taking up any space or more electrical outlets on my UPS. Is it a replacement for OLPC? No, but I have an immediate use for it.

It might be that it is implementing something described in the "On-The-Go and Embedded Host Supplement to the USB 2.0 Specification", which includes the ability for devices to switch between master and slave roles(which would suit the use of a slave-device type connector on the board alongside the fact that the board is driving a hub loaded with slave devices...) My reading of that spec suggests that the OTG device shouldn't be using that particular plug(they are supposed to use microA/B sockets only); but

Both USB and HDMI standards carry some power across. The HDMI port on a TV is likely (though not guaranteed) to have power, whereas most USB peripherals are unpowered. On the other hand, if you plug a powered USB port into the thing to be able to have multiple peripherals, then you could likely get power from the hub.

The HDMI spec requires a 55mA supply at 5V. This seems to be enough to power this little computer. It might not work with a lot of usb devices without a hub that has external power but a keyboard should be possible.

From the look of the picture in the article, you plug the device into a powered USB hub and it would draw power from there. The USB connector is male A type, so plugging a keyboard into it is out of the question.

It looks like there is a third connector from the "top" of the device (in the picture) which is at the end of 6 soldered wires in what looks like a ribbon arrangement... A second USB input? From the running shot it ends in a small black device. Either way the hub is necessary as it looks like the m

Look at the picture, see the wire leads on the top, that is the power. I assume this can be adjusted to a simple cable when it is finally out in production. Its still going to require a special wall wart.

If the idea is to plug in a keyboard, then why does it have a male USB plug, and not a female ?

Actually the article says something slightly different.

You plug it into a HDMI socket and then connect a keyboard via the USB port giving you a fully functioning machine running a version of Linux.

The writer specifically distinguishes between the HDMI port, which is plugged in, and the USB port, which is connected.
In the picture it looks like the device is connected to some sort of powered hub. The keyboard is also connected to the same hub. This is also likely where the device gets its power. What I can't tell from the picture is whether that is a simple powered hub or something more complex.

It still is confusing. It seems to be plugged into the hub using some weird cable.

With a regular USB hub, the type A clients cannot talk to each other, so if you plug this in a hub directly (in a type A connector), it can't see the keyboard. And if it's meant to be plugged into the type B connector on the hub (which it looks like from the picture), then it should have a standard type A female connector on the device, so you could use a standard type-A/type-B cable.

The likely use case is to have a USB hub plugging into the thing, rather than a single peripheral. And while USB hubs are not found with Type-A female to Type-B male cables, you would only have to do one gender change to get many peripherals plugged in.

I'd love one of these if it had networking as well. It would be a great thing to have a portable computer that could fill in for a emergency terminal, not just a dedicated machine with no connectivity, I guess I could carry a hub and such too but then the usefulness of having it on my keychain is gone.

Not quite as capable, in certain respects, as the Gumstix [slashdot.org] line of similarly sized ARM boards; but, on the other hand, you'll be lucky to walk away with change from $200 after getting your main board and an I/O expander if needed if you go that route. I wonder where the cost delta comes from?

One minor nit, this system doesn't appear to have any onboard networking(aside from the USB port which, from the picture of it connected to the B port of a hub, would appear to be one of those 'OTG' master or slave jobbies, which could easily enough act as a USB CDC or RNDIS connection to a host PC(which is kind of a waste for a single user; but a basic cheapy desktop loaded with USB cards could easily act as a gateway/fileserver/host for CPU intensive or x86 only programs over an X tunnel for a classroom full of the things)). I have to wonder if a "Flash drive sized" computer that basically doesn't work unless connected to a powered USB hub and a USB network adapter or CDC host PC might be rather less useful than would be a "pack of playing cards sized" computer that actually has a NIC and at least enough USB ports to support a mouse and keyboard(and ideally one extra for miscellaneous purposes)...

I'm guessing the price delta comes from the fact that Gumstix are an actual product you can buy, so the manufacturer has had to face the reality that their volume is too low to get the sort of pricing this article is using, and there are a lot of overheads to amortize if you don't want to lose money on the venture.

Since 2 years ago you can already get those media player box like Patriot Box Office for around $50 that run Linux and can play many 1080p media, with network port, HDMI (cable included)+composite video, multiple USB port, IR remote and power brick.

Except that looking at the specs [raspberrypi.org] It can decode h.264 high profile, something that most ultra-cheap players cannot handle. And as it runs linux, it can probably do so from a lot more container formats than vanilla.mp4 (finally, s standalone mkv player that can handle soft subtitles, ordered chapters and multiple audio tracks reasonably).

If it can decode h.264 then I see a product idea based on it.A new type of portable media player. put some flash on it just drag your media to it over the USB while it charges. Take it to your TV and plug it into your HDMI and hit play.

fully-featured computers would be a bit more useful to system integrators...

I'm/still/ waiting for someone to build an nVidia ION as small as their (not for sale) pico-ITX reference platform that came out years ago:http://www.mini-itx.com/67219812 [mini-itx.com]

The fit PC2 is pretty neat, but they still need binary blob drivers for Intel's crappy PowerVR GPU, which severely limits Linux distribution... if they had that form factor with an ION chipset I'd be sticking those little buggers all over the place:-P

1.6GHz dual-core, HD6310, no moving parts. Sure its Industrial-design, so it won't be as cheap as a bare board; but it should last a good long time. Add your choice of SSD or moving-parts 2.5" HDD, RAM, and 2 optional Mini Card PCI-E cards, and you're done. I'm hoping multiple companies come out with these, and I can pick one up for under $150 myself...

I was thinking they may cut into the robotics market. The Basic stamp was killed by high price and the Arduino. The computer on a USB stck may add much more power to robotics at low cost. The Arduino may become a programmable IO for this. This is much smaller than using an iPhone or other computer in robotics.

How about nVidia ION plus Penryn in 180 x 166 x 61 mm (7.1 x 6.5 x 2.4 in) including 8 GB DDR3, 2.5" HD, and slim optical? Screw that Atom crap and the designs that just can't cool themselves adequately. This has no oddball hardware and runs any distro you can name. Mine idles at 21 W AC input to the power brick. Here you go [aopen.com]

The USB-port seems to be an USB A plug, not a USB A Receptacle (port). A keyboard cannot be directly connected to it. Either it uses rather odd off-spec USB cabling, or it is not an USB host but an USB client device.

It appears to have a third connector for power. In the picture this appears to be connected to another USB cable.

I hate to reply to myself, but anyways: in the picture it also seems as if the USB cable that connects to the device is held together with a piece of tape. I guess this means it's actually a proper USB-port indeed and it's connected to a hub using a provisionary USB-cable with two identical plugs on it.

The keyboard and mouse are connected to this hub and the hub probably also provides (USB) power via the flatcable that can be seen on the picture. Probably the final version will have either a seperate power

Most people already carry around this much computing power with them in their smart phone. You can get adaptors for the USB perhipheral interface on most smart phones to turn it into a USB host with a hub, which can then be used to connect a keyboard. And I'm sure I've seen someone do a video-over-usb off one of those as well.

Why not just add a USB host port and an HDMI out to an existing smart phone? The incremental cost over the existing smart phone would be less than $25, they generally already have netw

By the time you've added a keyboard, mouse, display, a decent sized SD card for storage and/or WiFi connectivity so you can actually get data in or out you're probably closer to the cost of a netbook or OLPC, but have lost the benefit of portability.

I guess that a school could provide fixed monitors/keyboards in classrooms, so kids could sit down and plug in their £25 dongle, rather than entrust them with a £150 netbook (and suffer the inevitable loss and damage) - but then (a) the computers could only be used in suitably equipped classrooms and (b) you might as well fix the computers and give kids an even cheaper USB drive to carry around.

Yes, the kids could use their dongle computers at home but its going to be a while before you can assume that everybody has an HDMI TV, and unless kids have a HDMI-equipped TV in their own room (If they do, its good odds that they already have a PC anyway) they'd still have to persuade the rest of the family to miss The X Factor so that they could work on their project.

Nothing wrong with cheap-as-chips single board PCs, but I do wonder why people are so obsessed with building them into wall-warts and USB dongles, when t something slightly bigger (with more room for connectors and space for a couple internal USB devices or a micro HD) would be far more flexible and portable.

Also from TFA:

Braben argues that education since we entered the 2000s has turned towards ICT which teaches useful skills such as writing documents in a word processor, how to create presentations, and basic computer use skills. But that has replaced more computer science-like skills such as basic programming and understanding the architecture and hardware contained in a computer.

Strongly agree - but there's a second string to that, in that ICT has not only supplanted "proper" computer science (which did, once upon a time, exist as an optional high school subject in the UK) but has also tended to pull computers out of maths and science. I've encountered maths teachers who thought, for example, that kids "did" spreadsheets in ICT (they did, but only to turn out pie charts for the annual cat & dog survey - when faced with a fairly trivial modelling exercise they used calculators to fill in the spreadsheet). "ICT" was responsible for many BBC micros being ripped out of subject classrooms and thrown into skips to be replaced by the new ICT (PC) suites. Heck, I'm not advocating it, but even today you could make good use of a good old Beeb (bristling with inputs and outputs and easy to program) in a science classroom!

Overall, I'd welcome the demise of "ICT*" as a curriculum subject (about as sensible as having "handwriting" as a separate subject) on the two conditions that the other subjects were given the necessary time and support to teach IT skills in context, and there was a CS option at age 16-18 (with some sort of "teaser" in the compulsory maths curriculum).

Seems to me that these micro-PCs would be good for the latter, but effectively tied to the computer lab.

(*Note - the 'C' stands for "Communications" and was mandated by the UK Department of Redundancy Department in the UK, who, presumably, didn't think that 'Communication' had anything to do with 'Information' . Figures.)

I have been looking to build something similar. The closest thing to what I'd like to see is the ISEE IGEP MODULE http://www.igep.es/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=109&Itemid=123 [www.igep.es] If this had a Standard USB Type A plug rather than the miniAB it could plug directly into a computer, connect to Wifi (for Internet access), and then Enumerate a Ethernet device over USB. This would provide a basic USB Wifi module as well as providing a powerful Linux computer in-line.

I'd really like that thing if it had some kind of networking instead of HDMI. I'm currently in the market for a cheap, low-power computer I can use as a low-traffic Jabber server. Unfortunately "cheap" and "low-power" don't seem to go well together.

> > 1) How long do you think it will be before the boards become> > available?>

> I'd say three or four months. As you can see from the screenshots, we> have usable Linux, but we're waiting to get final versions of the the> chip from our supplier.>

> > 2) Are there any plans for a version with onboard ethernet?>> I don't think we're likely to do onboard Ethernet; we will have an> onboard 3-port USB hub so people can add an external adapter.>

> > 3) Are there any plans for a version with onboard wifi?>> Yes. The final version (though maybe not the first distributables)> will have onboard WiFi (probably 802.11n) in the price point.>

> > 4) What are the power requirements, both under load and at rest?>> At rest I'd say 50mW (we could trim this if it was really important,> but it gets a bit fiddly below this point), under serious load> (original XBox class graphics or 1080p30 H.264), 700mW.

I told people years ago that some day we'd walk into a drugstore and buy PCs next to the cigarette lighters and cheapo fans.

It just seems like a logical conclusion to the "cheaper, faster" trend. I started thinking this way in the late 90s. Prior to that, it was always $2000 for a PC. They just kept getting faster. Once they got fast enough to do video it seemed like there was not much more need for speed. It seems like price competition really heated up after that.

There are many little [andahammer.com] ARM [futureelectronics.com] boards [digi.com], some of which are priced as low as $39 in quantity 1. These are useful for applications where the ATMega in an Arduno is too limiting.

The choice of peripherals these guys made is unusual. With a USB port and an HDMI port, you can build a game machine, which is probably what they had in mind. Most such boards are more suited to embedded applications, and have I/O - digital TTL ports, Ethernet, LCD drive, etc.

A problem with these minimal machines is deciding what to put on them. The lowest-price devices tend to have too little of some resource and too much of something you don't need. This leads to a proliferation of little embedded boards with slightly different options, which runs the cost back up.

For hobbyists, the Leaflands Maple [leaflabs.com] may be interesting. It's an ARM board in the Arduno form factor. It's compatible with Arduno daughter boards ("shields"), and has some commonality with the Arduno development environment. Not enough memory to run Linux, though.

The $25 price is a vaporware price - they're not actually shipping. NXP is shipping LPCExpresso [nxp.com] for "under $30", and that includes the entire tool chain (Eclipse, GCC, JTAG debugger, etc.)

You joke but that was ACTUALLY my first thought when I read the summary. If they had some mechanic to easily cluster these together I'd be curious how many you'd need before you'd have the equivalent power of a typical PC....

For $25 I'd be inclined to pick one up for every TV in my house to use for web-browsing.

Screw that. Imagine it upgraded to have an ION video chipset and ethernet. XBMC client on a frigging HDMI plug hanging off the back of the set. that processor with an ion chipset will EASILY playback 720p streams from the internet.

How is this thing different than a Gumstix? [gumstix.org] Perhaps the price which is about 10% less, but on the other hand it is has yet to be sold so we don't know the price. And as for fitting a beowulf into a shoebox, well Gumstix was there first [gumstix.org]

Doesn't this have the possibility of replacing the computers in the computer lab? A PC for every kid that is their own person machine. All they do is plug it in when they go into the lab. Of course, troubleshooting problems on these things might be a nightmare, but you'll have that.

At the hardware level, it should be no more or less inscrutable-and-functionally-unfixable than essentially any modern board. At the software level, it probably depends on where the providing entity falls on the "Let them explore" vs. "Lock it down, we'll tell them what they need" spectrum: If you give the user full control over the device, in the spirit of hackerly independent exploration, you'll probably have them show up in fair variety of conditions. If you control more or less tightly, you probably wo

The spec list mentions composite output as well, though it doesn't seem to be broken out on the dev board(to a standard connector). All but the nastiest TVs can handle that. In the case of schools, I assume that the use case would be making the computer lab cheaper(even the cheapest nettops run ~$150 on a good day, and Thin client hardware, presumably because of its Big Serious Corporate provenance, can run rather more than that. Bottom end business-line PCs that can be more or less relied upon to have a st

I apologize if I didn't make it clear: Because of the enthusiasm for televised entertainment, penetration of basic CRT TVs with composite or RF ins has reached(at least on the neighborhood level) down to people who live in shacks and have highly intermittent access to electricity siphoned off the nearest utility pole and no running water.

Now that flat panels have gotten cheap(and a combination of shipping costs, consumer tastes, and environmental concerns have largely eliminated the CRT TV from the first

I'm using a MegaSquirt DIY electronic engine control unit. Currently, to get a full engine instrument cluster, I need to keep a full fledged laptop in the cockpit. (The tuning / engine gauge software is a program running on Linux.) Unless making updates to the tuning, no keyboard is required.

This device would be an INCREDIBLE advancement for me. I could hide it anywhere behind the panel, run a USB-to-Serial converter over to the MegaSquirt, and then run the HDMI to a 7" remote display.